The Whoniverse is The Verse inhabited by the Doctor and by Torchwood It is a large and unwieldy beast full of internal contradictions. Fortunately, it's a really, really big universe encompassing, er, all of space and a history stretching, oh, from the Big Bang to 100 trillion years in the future (plus an alternate universe or five).

Due to the nature of the show, any timeline described here can be overwritten, split, or contradicted — both by its own canon and by the countless spin-off media of the Doctor Who Expanded Universe. In turn, the core canon can contradict or overwrite the expanded universe, but can also canonise bits of it at times. This flexibility is thanks (per various different Word of God sources such as series writer Paul Cornell) to the fact that other than a general rule that says no one should have to purchase merchandise to understand the TV series itself, the BBC has never put in a hard and fast rule as to what is "canon", which contrasts with the Star Trek franchise where its owners (Paramount) and creator (Gene Roddenberry) put in a longstanding rule that only what appears on screen counted.

Television series set in the Whoniverse:

K-9 and Company (1981):A sixty minute pilot which the BBC declined to pick up as a series, aired as a one-off Christmas. It it, Sarah Jane Smith and K-9 Mark III investigate mysteries in the English countryside.

Torchwood (2006-2011)note The BBC has technically not cancelled Torchwood, but no new seasons have been commissioned since 2011 and as of 2014 none are planned.

K9 (2009-2010)note A non-BBC production; as such its canonicity with regards to the rest of the Whoniverse is questionable. To date only one season has aired; as of 2014 a second season remains officially in pre-production mode.

Behind-the-scenes TV series (unless noted, obviously they do not take place within the Whoniverse itself):

Its final episode in 2011 included a mini-episode, "Death is the Only Answer".

Revived in 2014 as an online-only series titled Doctor Who Extra.

Totally Doctor Who (2006-2007): Another behind the scenes series, but geared to younger viewers.

Its second and final season included an animated Doctor Who serial, "The Infinite Quest".

Torchwood Declassified (2006-2011)note As with the parent series, its future is currently in limbo pending whether any future Torchwood seasons are produced.: The equivalent to Confidential for Torchwood. Moved to a DVD feature after series 2.

A full listing with accompanying tropes, release dates and background information of these stories can be found on the Doctor Who Expanded Universe page. Works and media with their own pages on this website include:

Common tropes:

Aliens and Monsters: In about 85% of any television set in the Whoniverse. K-9 & Company, in a subversion of viewer's expectations, had a Scooby-Doo Hoax. Torchwood has humans as the main enemy or a threat alongside alien creatures in several instances, and in one episode had humans as the "monsters" with no known extraterrestrial or supernatural influences. Early seasons of Doctor Who also averted the trope by featuring occasional purely historical stories in which the only alien aspect was the Doctor himself (this format was common between 1964 and 1966, and was revived for a one-off story in 1982, but has yet to be revisited in the modern era).

All Myths Are True: Vampires, werewolves, fairies, Satan and minotaurs have all appeared, more or less as described by mythology. Other variants of the above have also appeared, including minotaurs... again. And let's not forget two different explanations for the Loch Ness Monster!

Broad Strokes: Continuity tends to operate on this basis in regards to the universe itself, less so for the characters.

Canon Welding: During the period when Doctor Who Magazine was owned by Marvel UK, there were some variously subtle hints dropped about links between the Whoniverse and the Marvel Universe. Michael Moorcock's Eleventh Doctor spin-off novel The Coming of the Terraphiles is a full-on Intercontinuity Crossover with Moorcock's "Second Ether" novels, which means that the Whoniverse is also part of Moorcock's multiverse. And Chris Boucher's audio spin-off Kaldor City and Fourth Doctor novel Corpse Marker both strongly hint that Doctor Who and Blakes Seven share a universe. There have also been contradictory hints given that at least some aspects of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhikers Guidetothe Galaxy may intersect with the Whoniverse.

The show drifted this way over the course of its very long run, starting out as relatively hard science fiction, with some lapses, such as the Celestial Toymaker and the Land of Fiction. The turning point was possibly the Key to Time Story Arc, which featured two god-like Anthropomorphic Personification of Order and Chaos, respectively, and then did not try too hard to call them anything else. Even so, fans complained when Silver Nemesis depicted Lady Peinforte using magic and naming it as such, though this was handwaved the next season as not literal magic, as such, but really the work of a Cosmic Horror called Fenric.

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